


Midnight Rebellion in the Newsroom

by jacksparrow589



Category: Anne of Green Gables (TV 1985) & Related Fandoms, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: But also sorta a fix-it, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Mutual Pining, Shirbert being a power couple, and they are using it for JUSTICE, because they're too busy trying to right a wrong, but like a mostly platonic one at this point, sorta canon-compliant, they've really only got one brain cell this time, while still being awkward teens in what they think is unrequited love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksparrow589/pseuds/jacksparrow589
Summary: "You're not writing about the balloon." It wasn't a question.For what it was worth, Anne stopped and drew herself up to her full height. "You're right: I'm not. I'm writing about women, about equality with men, aboutrespectand the fact that being a man or a woman shouldn't determine the respect you get. I'm going to finish it, come back tonight, and print it, so if you're going to try to talk me out of it…" She trailed off, but she knew her meaning was clear.Gilbert held up his hands in mock-surrender as he only barely tried to keep a smile from twitching the corners of his mouth up. "I'd like to think I know better than to try to dissuade you from much of anything. But… if you'd like… printing takes a long time. I'd be happy to help you out."Anne bit her lip. The offer sounded genuine, and Gilbert was always very even-handed with his criticism. She supposed a second set of eyes wouldn't hurt, anyway.----------In a world where Gilbert does try to "talk some sense into our flame-headed Robespierre". I mean, do we really think that would have worked?!
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 22
Kudos: 67





	Midnight Rebellion in the Newsroom

**Author's Note:**

> This all started in a conversation with erikame over on Twitter. (My reply can be found [here.](https://twitter.com/js5899/status/1368294798726025216)) Like, seriously, I have SO many questions about why this seems to have been Gilbert's/the students' responsibility to talk her out of it (he does reply "We didn't know" rather than "I didn't know", after all) rather than Miss Stacy's. Is it because they're friends? Newspaper leaders? What is going on here and WHY DID WE NOT SEE MORE OVERT SHIRBERT FRIENDSHIP ONSCREEN IN SEASON 3, DAMMIT?!  
> ...*ahem*  
> Point is, even if he'd tried without the brushing aside ("So, I suppose we should get to work," indeed! Get outta here with that bullshit, Gil—you couldn't not have overheard what Anne was saying!), we all know how well that would have worked out.  
> Big shout-out to Lil_Redhead for helping me temper my wordiness and confusing sentence structure! (Typos are wholly mine, though.)

Diana had stayed as late as she could, but her parents were certainly going to scold her if she dallied any longer. She squeezed Anne's shoulder and set off for the cloak room with a sigh, exchanging a brief wave with Gilbert along the way, much as she wanted to give him the cold shoulder. How messy things had gotten in a day…

* * *

Anne had to leave soon, Gilbert thought to himself. Miss Stacy had already checked in with the students and left, and it usually didn't take the newspaper terribly long after that to collect itself. All of the pages except Anne's were ready for distribution, and she'd been writing rather more slowly than normal. It wasn't like her to have this much trouble putting words to a page!

Gilbert sighed. He had to leave—Bash would be needing his help with the evening chores, and with the parts of dinner he still trusted Gilbert with—but he didn't want to leave with things bad between them yet again. He made his decision, and walked up to the desk she occupied.

"Anne, may I speak with you before I go?"

Anne blinked and looked up. She seemed to realize what time it was; her eyes widened and she started waving the page she'd just written to dry it and capping her pen. "Sorry. Yes?"

It was hard to be stern when she wasn't actively arguing with him, but maybe he didn't have to be. "Anne, what you said earlier, snapping at me like that. I didn't appreciate it. I know that you're upset—and you have every right to be!" he added quickly, seeing that Anne was drawing breath, inevitably to chastise him again, but he had to try. "I just… I don't see what Charlottetown had to do with it. And honestly, no, I have no plans like the ones you seem to think I do." He sighed and murmured, "Though I guess Bash did warn me that this was how it would look."

Anne straightened, her anger gone and replaced by something Gilbert couldn't quite decipher. "I see," she said quietly, though she didn't sound sure of it at all. "Well, I'm sorry for snapping at you. And, I suppose, for being uncharitable about Winifred. She seems like a nice girl—woman, I mean."

Now she sounded _defeated,_ and that left Gilbert with a pit in his stomach as Anne continued packing her things into her bag. He licked his lips as he tried to think of a reply, but all that came out was a faint agreement: "She is."

Silence fell for only a split second before Anne asked carefully, "Do you want company on your walk home?"

That, at least, Gilbert knew how to answer. With a small smile, he replied, "Yeah, I'd like that."

* * *

Anne was feeling better despite herself. Outside of Matthew and Marilla, Diana and Gilbert were the two people who almost always inspired ease in her when she couldn't manage it herself. Admittedly, things had been a little more fraught between herself and Gilbert as of late, but there were _reasons_ for that.

It wasn't his fault she had a crush, of course, just as it surely wasn't his fault that he'd appealed to Miss Rose and she to him enough to the point where they'd been arm-in-arm at the fair. It could be a misunderstanding. It certainly seemed that Gilbert thought there was one, but Anne hadn't quite been able to shake the sting of being deemed merely a friend no matter the truth of the situation. It was all the more painful that Winifred's connection with Gilbert had been the one that defied words. Even now, he was only saying what Winifred wasn't, and that left an uncomfortably broad array of ways to still define what she was to him.

Anne gave her head a small shake. She couldn't be thinking about that now; this article was what had to matter.

"…not like you to be stuck on an article like this. I'd have thought you'd have more words than a page can fit about going up in that balloon," Gilbert was saying.

Anne looked sharply up at him. "I'm not stuck on an article about the balloon," she said carefully. It was the truth, after all.

Gilbert wasn't the second-smartest in the classroom for no reason, however, Anne thought grimly as she saw him make the connection. "You're not writing about the balloon." It wasn't a question.

For what it was worth, Anne stopped and drew herself up to her full height. "You're right: I'm not. I'm writing about women, about equality with men, about _respect_ and the fact that being a man or a woman shouldn't determine the respect you get. I'm going to finish it, come back tonight, and print it, so if you're going to try to talk me out of it…" She trailed off, but she knew her meaning was clear.

Gilbert held up his hands in mock-surrender as he only barely tried to keep a smile from twitching the corners of his mouth up. "I'd like to think I know better than to try to dissuade you from much of anything. But… if you'd like… printing takes a long time. I'd be happy to help you out."

Anne bit her lip. The offer sounded genuine, and Gilbert was always very even-handed with his criticism. She supposed a second set of eyes wouldn't hurt, anyway. She nodded. "I'd appreciate that, but you don't have to. It's going to take a long time, and it's not like we have two printing presses—"

"Anne, I wouldn't offer if I didn't mean it," Gilbert assured her. "I _want_ to help."

Anne gripped the strap of her bag. There he went with that stare of his, leaving her speechless. She took a deep breath. "Meet me at the schoolhouse after dark. I have to wait until Matthew and Marilla are in for the night."

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. "Am I to understand this is officially a caper, then?"

With a soft laugh, Anne nodded. "It would seem it is." She held out her hand, crooking her pinkie. "As such, I'll need you to swear yourself to secrecy, if only for the next few hours. So, Gilbert Blythe, do you swear?"

Grinning fully, Gilbert nodded and hooked his pinkie with Anne's. "I swear."

* * *

Anne whipped around when the schoolhouse door opened, eyes wide. "Gilbert! You scared me."

"Sorry." Gilbert closed the door behind him and shrugged off his jacket, bringing it to the desk next to the one Anne occupied rather than leaving it in the cloak room. "Dellie started fussing just as I was about to leave the first time. I think she's getting close to teething. And I think… I think she knows that—that Mary…" He took a heavy breath.

Anne stood to face him and put her hands on his shoulders. "I know that it hurts," she said softly, her voice just a little unsteady. "But she probably _does_ , honestly. And that's because you and Bash remember Mary. You miss her. You mourn her. And that's _normal,_ Gilbert. Caring is… it's hard. But it's the right thing. I hope you don't doubt that." She lifted one of her hands to swipe the back of it across her eyes, which had filled with tears, as Gilbert did the same for himself.

"Sorry," Gilbert murmured for the second time in as many minutes. "And thank you, Anne." He looked down at the desk. "Are you ready to set it?"

"I… could you take a look at it first?" Anne asked. "It makes sense to me, of course, but I suppose I'm not always the best judge of normal."

Gilbert picked up the pages, matter-of-factly informing Anne as he did so, "I'm not sure 'normal' is what you want when you're aiming for change."

Anne got the printing press ready as Gilbert looked it over, making the occasional mark with the pen Anne had left on her desk, but not saying anything. After ten minutes, the last three of which saw Anne only just barely patiently sitting back on the desk next to him, Gilbert set the papers down. "A few minor corrections, but I don't want to change your words. They make sense, and to have impact, they should stay yours." He stood and stretched. "Let's get to setting type."

They worked quietly and quickly, getting the type set. When they were done, Anne inked the type and laid down the paper, and gestured with a flourish to Gilbert to pull the bar so that the page could be printed.

Just as Gilbert was about to hand her the finished paper to hang, however, his eyes widened just a bit in shock. He crumpled up the paper and scrambled to rearrange the type. "Just a misspelling!" he assured Anne as she looked curiously at him. "It's my fault. I guess I was a little preoccupied."

"What did you misspell?" Anne's tone was casual, but her eyes gleamed with mischief

 _Oh no._ He'd made the crucial mistake of admitting it. Anne advanced on Gilbert, who took a step back and raised the paper over his head, smearing his thumb across a section of the beginning before realizing that hadn't completely hidden his mistake. He held Anne back with his free arm before turning and ripping up the paper, starting with the offending bit. Anne tried to reach around him, but Gilbert held the paper out of reach until he was done tearing it. He let the scraps fall to the floor and ground them down with his heel, laughing with Anne all the while to mask the terror of Anne potentially seeing what he'd done.

"Spoilsport!" Anne laughed as he gathered the scraps and tossed them into the wood stove. "Someday, you'll tell me. When I outscore you in the Queen's entrance exam, perhaps."

"I'll consider it," Gilbert hedged, inking the type anew. At least it would give him enough time to come up with a lie to cover "I was tired and put in my surname instead of yours and so the byline said _Anne Blythe_ until I fixed it". Maybe she'd find it funny, because it certainly was that, but the idea of her sharing his name, of fighting for justice together… Gilbert knew how he felt about the general idea, but he wasn't sure he was brave enough to ask Anne tonight. What if she took it seriously—and worse, what if the idea didn't appeal? He shook his head: he couldn't think about that right now.

Anne had pulled the bar and was now hanging the finished product, allowing Gilbert to get the next paper in after Anne looked that one over to make sure everything was as it should be, and so it went for the next couple hours, with the two of them trading off jobs of inking and pulling and drying and folding the papers together.

* * *

Anne bounced along beside Gilbert as they made their way to the church to leave the papers. (She was full of nervous energy, she'd told him when he'd asked.) She'd refused to let Gilbert carry the papers, clutching them tightly to her instead. She was glad she'd foregone her pinafore tonight; the green of her dress was a little more forgiving when it came to hiding ink stains.

"This is it!" she chirped breathlessly as the church came into sight, and when she placed the papers on the porch with a rock to keep them in place, she let out a satisfied sigh.

She stood there, looking at the papers for a moment, then, on impulse, spun and wrapped her arms around Gilbert. "I can't believe it! We actually did this!"

Gilbert had been stunned for a moment, but had readily wrapped his free arm around Anne, daring to pull her close for just a second before he felt Anne's grip on him go slack. He released her, and she stumbled back a step. "S-sorry. I just got… caught up." She cleared her throat and pushed her braids back behind her ears nervously. "Thank you, though. I… having you here was really helpful. And it's… nice to have someone who believes in what I'm saying, you know?"

Not sure he could trust his voice, Gilbert merely nodded at first, swallowing before he tried to speak. "I'm really happy to have helped. And I'm glad that you—that I could be someone you could trust with this."

Anne didn't seem sure what to say, herself. She fiddled with the end of one of her braids for a moment, then yawned. "Oh! Sorry. I guess it's pretty late."

Gilbert looked around. "I think it might qualify as 'pretty early' now," he pointed out, unable to stifle his own yawn.

Anne rolled her eyes, but all she could say was, "I'm too tired to have this argument tonight. But don't think you've won."

Gilbert laughed, and they began to walk.

* * *

The walk to the church had been awkwardly quiet for lack of much to say (and a great deal of excitement on Anne's part), but the quiet of their walk home was comfortable. Their mission was complete, and Anne and Gilbert were focused on getting home and getting some sleep before their absences were noticed.

Anne was so tired that she managed to stumble over a root at one point. Gilbert caught her hand to give her something to pull her upright, and Anne clung to it for just the briefest moment after regaining her balance before locking eyes with Gilbert and dropping his hand as quickly as she'd taken it.

Anne had insisted Gilbert not go out of his way to see her home, threatening at one point to stop and not move until he was out of sight, but he'd replied that he supposed they were going to be out here all night, then. She didn't really mind the company, but it certainly wasn't helping the nervous fluttering in her stomach. Most of it was at how the article would be received, but she couldn't deny to herself that some of it was due to Gilbert's presence, and more specifically to having him as a co-conspirator, even if his name wasn't on the byline.

She was so preoccupied that she nearly missed the turnoff to Green Gables. Whether it was wisdom or exhaustion, Anne didn't know, but Gilbert didn't remark on it.

Gilbert walked her up to the porch, which, with the sky already starting to take on the tinge of dawn, risked Matthew discovering them if he was up particularly early, but Anne suddenly had the overwhelming urge to not quite let the night go just yet. She turned to look at him. "Well." She cleared her throat. "Thank you. Again. You didn't have to do any of this. But you did. Gilbert, I—I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome. I'd say I'm happy to help anytime, but after this, maybe we can have our next misadventure during daylight hours?" Gilbert suggested.

Anne had to laugh, though she was able to keep it quiet. "I'll keep that in mind." Her smile softened just a little, and for a moment, the thought crossed her mind that surely it wouldn't be so wrong to just kiss his cheek. She blinked the impulse away before she could act on it, hoping Gilbert didn't think the expression any odder than anything else she usually did. "Well, good night," she murmured.

Gilbert looked almost serious, though his eyes were still certainly warm. "Good night, Anne," he told her quietly before turning to leave.

Anne heaved a sigh and, as sneakily as she could, opened the door to Green Gables. Only when she was safely in bed after her conversation with Marilla would she notice the faint inky fingerprints on her hand where Gilbert had caught it to help her keep her balance. Her last thought before she drifted off to sleep would be that there was something rather poetic about it, but it would be only when she'd wake that she'd have clarity on it.

* * *

Muriel Stacy could tell that something was amiss as soon as she set foot in the church. Anne had said that she was finishing up her article when Muriel had been leaving the other afternoon, and while she'd had an odd feeling about it, she'd trusted Anne to be responsible. She usually was, after all.

She slid into the pew next to Gilbert, who was looking at the front page of the paper with an expression she couldn't read, but it certainly wasn't the consternation evident in most of the rest of the congregation. He also looked tired, though she supposed that, living in the same house as a baby, that wasn't entirely surprising. Then again, he'd also mentioned his niece was mostly sleeping through the night now. Maybe he'd stayed up too late studying.

Now probably wasn't the time to dwell on that. "What's going on?" she asked.

Gilbert silently handed her the paper, and the issue immediately became apparent. Muriel looked around. Anne was nowhere to be found, and, save for Gilbert, the other students who worked on the newspaper seemed just as shocked as Muriel was. She turned to him. "Why didn't you talk some sense into our flame-headed Robespierre?" she hissed.

Clearly not expecting this question, Gilbert blinked a few times before summoning a sheepish "I tried."

There was more to that story; of that, Muriel was completely, utterly, and unshakably certain. However, now wasn't the moment to untangle it. Still, she couldn't quite keep the amusement from her otherwise extremely frustrated "Of course you did."

Gilbert caught enough from her tone to be embarrassed, though about precisely which parts of it, Muriel was unsure. Then again, with Anne and Gilbert, one had to be used to rather a lot of exasperation and a distinct lack of knowing just what would happen next.

And as proud as she was of Anne for tackling the issue with her usual forthrightness, with Josie fleeing the church in tears and the Andrews family in high dudgeon, she needed to smooth things over. She'd known teaching to be thankless at times already, but Muriel had the feeling she was going to know a new level of it by the time the day was out.

**Author's Note:**

> I did kind of want to make this more or less hook back into canon, though the bit where Anne chews Gilbert out again probably goes away, mostly because he's trying to walk the line of "I don't disapprove of this and you know it but I can't say why." Anne knows he's trying not to be harsh, so she probably doesn't snap back at him… unless she takes it as a betrayal, which, at this point, who knows? Not me; that's who!  
> As usual, please put your thoughts in the comments! You can also find me on Twitter at js5899 and on Tumblr and js589.


End file.
